Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Kate Beckinsale is Making Snow Angels

by Jordan Riefe

Kate Beckinsale is not just another pretty face. Sure, she’s gorgeous, but she’s already had a more varied career than most of her peers. Every time you try and pin down Kate Beckinsale as “this” or “that” type of actress, she switches it up. Beckinsale broke through in indie movies like The Last Days of Disco but was soon stuck as an action star after the Underworld movies. Instead of battling werewolves in leather pants for the rest of her career, she switched it up again and started to be taken seriously again in movies like The Aviator and, now, the highly acclaimed Snow Angels. She sat down with us to talk about the ups and downs of her career and her new film, which sounds like a definite up.

Kate Beckinsale on playing a character like Annie:

“Well we all made it together, that’s what I like so much about working with [director] David [Gordon Green] is that he was very flexible from the beginning, wanting us to improvise and bring ideas and Sam and I absolutely leapt on that with both hands. For me it really helped that my husband and kid were there in Nova Scotia with us. It was the first time my daughter was not on the set with me every day because there were just too many things that were…I think it would have been distressing for her to see me so upset and it wouldn’t have been right. So I was able to commit completely to the working day and then go home and get in bed with my daughter and my husband not try to kill me and everything was great, you know. But it was definitely…we prepared a lot, we worked really hard and I think it was just Sam and I were a good combination, we liked each and each other’s work and by the end it sort of took on a life of its own.”

Beckinsale on her character’s pain:

“I think [co-star] Sam [Rockwell] and I really felt like we created this whole history together and by the end of the movie when everything is coming undone it was really incredibly painful and extremely exciting and thrilling as well. But it was very tough and it’s going to be weird seeing it with an audience. It’s going to feel very exposing and personal and strange to have that seen. I feel kind of weird about it, but it’s good.”

On the response her fans might have to the darkness of the film:

“I think it’s a constant flow of that, I mean I started out in British movies and it was kind of difficult because it was like, ‘well she can’t really play an American because she’s British’. Then I did The Last Days of Disco and Brokedown Palace and then it was, ‘oh she’s very fragile” and [then I did] Pearl Harbor and then I did Underworld and it was like, ‘well she’s kind of tough’. So I’ve been dealing with this…you know it’s a constant quest to not get stuck. I have absolutely no snobbery about movies at all. I like good movies, but I don’t only like one type of movie. I love Little Miss Sunshine, All About Eve, and I love Rocky. I don’t feel that one cancels out the other, so I’m perfectly open to doing all genres of movies. I don’t feel I have turned my back on anything, it’s just that I like to keep trying new things.”

On the relationship between Annie and Arthur:

“That was always there, that sense of …it wasn’t so much I think from Annie’s side a sexual crush, I think it was almost a nostalgic crush, the feeling of being the hot babysitter. It’s been a long time since she felt like the hot babysitter and I think that’s what she’s flirting with more than flirting with him, what it felt like to be the one people desired and fantasized about. But she’s in a different spot now, so it’s like a little blast from the past.”

On her inspiration to get into the film business:

“I didn’t really have a mentor as such. I always felt…my father died very suddenly when I was young and I always I think got slightly confused - I was only five - between the concepts of, God, my father, and John Lennon, slightly all blurred into one thing (laughs). So I definitely felt that my father was an amazing and brilliant actor and I always grew up knowing that I would never be as good of an actor as he was, but I like the fact that he would be proud of me and he liked me a lot and was into me and I really like feeling that connection. I didn’t believe in myself, was a completely insecure, overweight, self loathing, aggressive freak growing up. So the believing in myself is coming. It’s coming and I thank my husband for that more than anything.”

Beckinsale on her expanding fanbase:

“I actually spent a couple of evenings during Oscar time with Jonah [Hill] from Superbad and I’m so happy I have my fanbase and not his fanbase. That guy, literally every two seconds someone goes, ‘DUDE!’ and I couldn’t stand it. My fanbase, my teenage male fanbase go really quiet and run away, which is very easy for me to have that happen because I’m just as frightened of them as they are of me. I don’t really think about it much, like I said they do tend to run away from me more and whisper. Adam Sandler and Jonah have the high-fiving kind, which would definitely scare me more. People are usually very cool, very nice, it’s fun. Comic-Con is always a bit of a surprise I never realized so many people dress up like that all of the time.”